After
by The Kelpsinator
Summary: What happens to the knight when the sorceress is gone?


After 

What happens to the knight when the sorceress is gone?

Seifer POV; possible spoilers

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Did you choose me simply because I was there? Because I was in the right place at the right time, my back against the wall, my mind confused? Did you choose me because you knew I would be easily convinced to leave everything behind for you?

I don't know the answer, and I never will. I would like to think you chose me because you wanted me. That you came to the TV station at that exact moment because you knew I would be there. I would also like to think that it wasn't just a dream, that you meant the words you said and that when you touched me I was truly feeling your fingers. I don't know how much of it, if any, was real.

Even Odine, who calls himself a sorceress expert, doesn't know. He could not tell me if my feeling for you were (are) real. He could not tell me if the feelings ever leave, if I will ever stop aching for you. The only thing he could tell me was that a sorceress does not choose her knight, she chooses who she will make into her knight.

He showed it to me, strapped me up into one of his machines and showed me my brain activity on a screen, levels of chemicals on a precise bar graph, the rates of my heart and breathing. None of it made any sense, all of it medical jargon nearly indecipherable through his accent until he compared the data with someone he pulled off the street. The differences took my breath away. Everything was different, right down to how my cells reproduced. You changed my DNA, changed everything that makes me _me_, all just by offering me my dream.

Odine told me it should have been excruciatingly painful. He told me the pain should have killed me. Sometimes I think you did kill me, at least partially, but I don't remember any of what happened when I fell. All I remember are dreams.

I remember dreams of the ocean with storm clouds churning just above waves that beat at a rocky shoreline; dreams of wings, huge black-feathered wings beating as slowly as my heart, wings that made the pressure build in my head; dreams of upside-down castles with halls full of dust and decay; dreams of lightning striking constantly, endlessly, at something I couldn't see; dreams of leveled cities full of skeletons and corpses; dreams of music I could see, notes the same liquid radiance of your golden eyes. When I told him, Odine sniffed and dismissed it all as delusions, a side effect of being "witched."

It took four men to hold me back from killing him, and they had to knock me unconscious before they could drag me from the room.

I re-read all the books I'd poured over as a child. The spines of the dusty tomes were cracked and the pages were falling out, swollen with sea air. They were ancient hand-written accounts of long-dead knights and those who had witnessed a sorceress's knight. I plodded through the archaic language with new insight. Every word had a new meaning.

And thee Knight of thee Sorceress shall forever defend her Honour and shall forever be her greatest Advocate in all situations, even should thee Sorceress pass on before thee Knight. Thee Knight of a Sorceress has been known to kill Man, Woman and even Child at but thee hint of foul word against his Sorceress. This is but one aspect of thee Hold a Sorceress has upon one she has chosen to be her Knight.

Most of the knights either died with their sorceress or shortly afterwards. There was, however, one who couldn't be there when his sorceress was killed. He couldn't avenge her death and went mad because of it.

Fujin and Raijin exchange look when they think I can't see. To them, my fall into the dream must have looked like I was falling into madness. They know I haven't fully come back. Even so, they would die for me, have nearly done so many times. Once, I would have done the same without thinking. Now, the only one I would die for is you. They worry about me, I know, Fuu most of all. I think se might love me, even if he will not say it. I think I could love her, except that she is not a sorceress.

The knight wandered the entire planet until he died alone in a wasteland. He didn't have a name and he has almost been forgotten.

I will never have that privilege. My name will be remembered for generations. It will reach you and you will hear it and know it and seek me out when you travel backwards through the slippery consistency of time. Squall will be remembered for generations also, but his name will be as much a praise as mine will be a curse. I don't know what fine, intangible line separates us. He has a sorceress, as I did. His lives, however, while mine is (you are) gone. (Would things be different now if you were alive and she wasn't?)

He is being entranced by his own sorceress now. Watching it happening is like watching myself fall. And yet, it is still utterly foreign. He and I have always been mirror opposites, photo negatives. We are the extremes of one person. I know him and I know what he is going through and the dreams he is having. Watching it rips open old wounds and surfaces painful memories of you.

I felt it when you died. I felt your pain and your flare of anger followed by your sorrowful resignation. I felt your eyes close and your heart stop and my body echoed yours. I met you in that halfway place between everything as the world uncompressed with a long shuddering tear. You said my name, reaching our your hand to me. Your hair was floating all around your face. I reached for you, answered your call with your name on my lips. But just as our fingers began to touch, I was jerked back into life by an electric shock to my chest. No one understood why I wept to be brought back. I wept for the missed chance of going with you to what lies beyond, wept for the missed chance of touching you.


End file.
